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“If all of the golf instruction books, videos, and lessons for the last 100 years had taught people to keep their weight on the left side, and swing their hands inward, we would have generations of golfers drawing the ball instead of slicing” – Mike Bennett & Andy Plummer ‘The Stack and Tilt Swing’

NOTICE – This post is largely targeted to the single digit handicappers, low handicap players and players. However if you don’t fall into this category, keep reading – this info will help your game too.

And the reason I say that (above) is because, to go about what I’m about to describe you’re going to need some talent. Once you possess some talent at this game, you want to see how deep the rabbit hole goes.. Don’t you?

Well here’s some info that will blow your mind – Focus on what you’re supposed to be doing!…

The aim of golf is to get the ball in the hole in the fewest shots. Tally your score up over 18 holes and voila.

But how many of you can actually claim that you focus on that task 100% while you’re out on the course?.. Not many. I know, I ask these questions all the time to people. Everyone says they can do a much better job of focusing on the task at hand. Playing the game.

The good news of-course, is that you don’t have to focus on the task at hand for 4-5 hours while you’re out there.

Talk about, and focus on whatever you want while you’re not around your ball. But make sure you know it’s game time when it’s your turn. Knowing this actually makes the Pros play the whole 4-5 hours in a zen like state because they spend the whole time looking forward to the next time it’s their turn. There’s a spring in their step!

If you can spend your whole time on the course like this, you’ll have no problem applying the chunking method to your round and suddenly you’re in this hole by hole challenge of trying to make birdie after birdie after birdie.

Chunking

Chunking is simply a smart way of breaking something complex down into manageable sizes. Some examples of chunking are:

– How we remember our Mobile Phone number (202-717-****)
– The alphabet
– The golf swing
Just about every piece of information we’ve ever learned, we’ve broke down to make it simple to solve. Playing golf and shooting 66 is no different.

Most of us break the 18 holes into two 9 holes. I’m sure you know exactly how you’re doing after 9 holes. We keep score in our head naturally.

I used to break the game into 2 games (two 9 hole games) when I was younger, but then I discovered breaking the game up into even smaller games is far more effective.

Essentially, the game is 18 little games. But trying to make 18 birdies is simply too difficult. And after a few attempts the information you’re feeding your brain is that it’s impossible – so why try! If You only make 1 birdie over the whole 18 holes, you’ve essentially failed 17 times. That’s a lot of failure for your mind to deal with. Plus, if you make a bogey you’ve not only failed but failed miserably!

But trying to make 1 birdie every 3 holes isn’t impossible. So I highly advise playing the game in this manner.

1 birdie every 3 holes, no bogeys = 66.

This style of playing the game keeps you focused on the task in hand (keeps us in the present), and puts the emphasis on constantly building momentum. Something that most golfers lack.

Now of-course you’re not going to get very far unless you can hit fairways and greens. So let’s use the same principle with the golf swing.

Chunking The Golf Swing

To understand how to use chunking in the golf swing we must first understand the task. The task is to deliver the club to the ball with a forward leaning shaft. To to this we need the club to LAG.

THE SECRET TO GOLF = LAG

To produce LAG there’s a few essentials that must happen.

You have to assemble to the moving parts

You have to load the lag

Then you have to deliver that lag to the back of the ball

Every golf swing needs LAG so it doesn’t matter what style we want to call it..

Examples:
Modern Swing
Stack and Tilt Swing
Next Generation Swing
Single Plane Swing
Perfect Connection Swing
The Haney Method… Or whatever else we want to call it just to build a brand!

The most important element is LAG. Great golf swings have LAG, poor golf swings have NO LAG. Great golf swings have nice soft hands and forearms, poor golf swings have hard hands and forearms from too much squeezing.

So if you’re reading this and you’re off a h’cap higher than say 10. Chances are you need to learn everything you can about how to LAG the club. Keep reading.

Assembling the moving parts

This simply means making sure your left arm is straight, swinging, and your right arm is folding. You’ve Turned, Tilted and Extended your body to stay truly centered over the golf ball. You’re sitting into your left leg (flexing) as your right leg straightens to allow your tailbone to move closer to the target (counterbalancing).

Your hands on the handle steer the ship, not the clubhead. The clubhead simply reacts to how we educate our hands. Therefore, so long as the body and arms are doing their job, most of our attention should always be in our hands.

The hands move Back, Up and Inwards to get to the top. The left wrist cocks/hinges and the right hand/wrist bends.

Loading

There’s a few parts we have to LOAD before we deliver the club to the ball.

It all starts from the ground up, so the first thing to load is the weight under the front foot. As we’ve already counterbalanced into the front leg going back, this simply involves imagining squashing a tomato under the front foot.

Once you’ve established a sitting feeling into the front leg, allow the right arm to also attach back onto the torso. This happens from the hips thrusting forward and the spine starting to tilt AWAY from the target, This is what re-attaches the right arm to the torso. From here the club is going to build up pressure in the first pad/joint of the right hand trigger finger. It’s not until you’ve truly felt this loading that we start driving with the right side and arm (providing the acceleration) and pulling with the left side (swinging the left arm).

Left Forearm Torque

There is also the case of torque at the top of the swing. And this is what you see the likes of Sergio and Alvaro Queros produce. This is simply the left forearm twisting at the top of the swing, which allows the clubhead to drop back behind you. This torque is so valuable because not only does it shallow out the plane – delivering the club to the inside of the ball – swinging in to out, but it also produces more power into the back of the ball.

To feel more torque in your transition, swing to the top (with soft hands and forearms) and just hang out for a few seconds. If your left hand is placed on the club correctly (left thumb pointing down the right center) the weight of the clubhead will start to twist your left forearm, the clubhead will feel more behind you and the shaft will feel very flat. This is left forearm torque. Most golfers shaft plane is too steep coming down.

Torque Drill

Try and point your left elbow and butt end of the club at a point on the ground a few feet in front the ball, from your perspective. This will start to develop your awareness of the left forearm torque.

So another part of loading in my opinion is this left forearm torque at the top. If we can load up all these different components, our job then is to deliver this load to the back of the ball.

There is never ever any kind of release of throwing action with the right hand and wrist. The right wrist has to be BENT at impact.

So there you have it, as mentioned at the start, I said I was going to speak to the better players here. There’s obviously some more parts to the puzzle such as the psychological strategies, and you can find more info on that inside my Online Academy.

But if you’d like to learn more or don’t understand any of it, ask a question below or join my Online Academy and we’ll start incorporating these elements into your swing.